Blog Posts by Pushpalee Johnson

Yahoo Agency Hack - IndiaHack days are a tradition at Yahoo! and come in many popular variants. Like Open Hack, which sees huge participation from the developer community in India. This years event in Bangalore drew over 700 developers from 20 Indian states, and surfaced an amazing 171 hacks!

Moving to a different part of the country and a different segment, we recently held Agency Hack at Gurgaon. This was our first-ever hackathon in India open exclusively to advertising agencies.

With digital advertising coming of age in the region, some of the countrys biggest ad agencies like Ogilvy, Webchutney and Digitas were represented at the event. What makes the Agency Hack format unique is that it draws participation not just from developers, but also designers, user-experience specialists, digital strategists, media planners and copy writers. Their combined perspective led to some well-rounded, considered solutions, as teams came up with smart digital hacks andother ideas to solve real-life problems.

The hack challenges for this years event are multi-device experiences, digital media and advertising, and digital communications. There is also a catch-all category called Surprise Us for those who like to take the road less traveled. Here's a snapshot from the floor:

Foursquare for street food

Lots of websites index and rate restaurants, but no-one rates street food. Since street food has its own staunch following in India, four hackers from PESIT South Campus have decided to remedy that. Their hack, an as-yet unnamed Android app, will allow users to add their favorite street food carts to the application by locating it on a map (detection based on geo fencing), uploading a photo, adding pricing info, and finally, adding a rating and review of the service.
This application depends on crowd-sourcing content from users; a foursquare for street food, say the team. Since street food hawkers (vendors) often move around, there is an option to alert fellow street-food enthusiasts if a

This year is extra-special, because its our 5th Open Hack in India. The event has set and smashed registration records each year in this region. From just 180 developers in 2007, this time we have 705 hackers in the house from the length and breadth of India. Hackers have re-grouped after lunch and are now down to building their hacks in earnest. Throughout the event, well bring you the buzz and a sneak peek into what the vibrant developer community here is building, as you read this

BTW, on the sidelines of Open Hack India, local music station Radio Indigo is broadcasting live and uninterrupted for 24 hours through the hackathon. Stay tuned!

Get hitched, with a little help from this app

This bunch, from EMC and Cisco, is working on a fun idea that has already found some takers at the event! Its called Hitch, and is a date-help app. Imagine being stuck in an awkward situation on a date, where you dont know what to talk about. Discreetly key in the persons name on Hitch,